MEGADETH--one of hard rock’s most revered acts--will re-issue seven of their gold-selling albums July 27 on Capitol Records. The CDs range from the group’s 1986 debut Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying to 1999’s Risk plus the 1996 side project MD.45. Founder, singer, guitarist and primary songwriter DAVE MUSTAINE spent months remixing, remastering, restoring--and in some cases reconstructing--the band’s catalog to bring it as close to his original vision as possible. With each album packed with unreleased tracks, demos and alternate mixes, along with painfully honest liner notes from the iconoclastic Mustaine, these are the definitive editions of MEGADETH’s musical legacy.
   The results across the board on all eight albums are impressive. Later efforts like Risk benefit from Mustaine’s ruthless stripping of the pop elements, giving the album a harder, truer sound, but it’s the earlier efforts like Peace Sells… and So Far So Good So What that benefit the most. There’s no question, with the sounds refurbished and maximized, that this was an undeniably powerful and lethal band, fully deserving their status as one of the most influential metal acts of the last 20 years. “Some of the songs just didn't turn out the way that I wanted them to when they were first made, due to money restrictions, technology limitations and so on,” says Mustaine. “I believe now that there is nothing standing in the way of what I felt when I wrote these songs and how you will be able to hear them.”
   So Far… might have required the biggest overhaul, but every album needed a fair amount of work and, in some cases, even some re-recording. “You know, it wasn’t really hard when I first opened up the very first drive to roll up my sleeves and think, ‘This is gonna be great,’” Mustaine says now. “But as the project rolled on and the difficulties started to accumulate, I began to get a little nervous. When I got to stuff like ‘Take No Prisoners’ (from Rust In Peace), and it was two o’clock in the morning and we find out that the vocal track is gone, I was pretty freaked out.”
   In a New York Times live review (8/16/97), Ben Ratliff described MEGADETH’s mix of speed-metal and straight-ahead rock and roll: “Dave Mustaine, the band's singer, mastermind and one of its guitarists, has augmented the repertory with songs that have dynamic developments and emotional contours. Some proceed as pop songs, which would have been heresy for a speed-metal band a decade ago. These new songs don't depend on the suffocating rhetoric of speed, flash and chanted quatrains about power and domination. They use riffs to different ends, as melodic components rather than purely rhythmic spurs; they don't fill spaces with long, virtuosic, thousand-note guitar solos.”
   These vital re-issues will be followed by a new album from MEGADETH (due September 14 on Sanctuary Records), The System has Failed, which is the first new music from Dave Mustaine since a freak arm injury sidelined him in 2002. His arm healed, Mustaine--along with drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and bassist Jimmy Sloas--recently completed work on the first all-new Megadeth album in three years. A bruising sample track, “Kick The Chair,” leaked online by Mustaine, portends great things. “I think that it has come full circle back to the aggressive, political cynical lyrics and aggressive guitar riffing that I am famous--or infamous--for,” says Mustaine. “I feel something very similar to when I first started out when I hear this new record…it’s exciting for me and I can't wait for the public to be able to have this record in their hands.”
   MUSTAINE is currently planning to tour the US beginning in late October, followed by dates in Europe. Check out www.megadeth.com for the latest news.


The re-issued CDs are as follows: